


Persian rug

by Clovercove



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Five gets high as a kite and makes some revelations about relationships, Gen, I had to beta read this myself and wanted to cry rip, I love that gremlin grandpa too much, I wrote three quarters of this in one sitting and didnt even realize it got so long, Number Five | The Boy-centric, as per usual, dont ask about the title, it's a whole thing, oh boy this was a doozy, what can i say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29231865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clovercove/pseuds/Clovercove
Summary: Five's floating. Or maybe he's landing. He's trying to get somewhere, trying to get to someone, he just cant remember who.Oh well, he has all the time in the world....Or: Five gets drugged and has a reasonably good time. Until he's not. Good thing his family finds him by then.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Comments: 10
Kudos: 212





	Persian rug

He felt very very bad. But also kind of good. His head felt airy and washed-out, like someone had taken a sponge and scrubbed the insides of his skull raw. His nose felt cold and when he scrunched it up he couldn’t feel a thing. His hands were a bit too big to him and when he curled them into fists he could barely squeeze them tight enough to feel. His fingers felt dry. He rubbed his thumb against them and -sure enough- it felt like he was rubbing two pieces of paper together. It was smooth. 

He was laying down it seemed. His back was stiff and achy and he wanted to stay in place for as long as he could. Sadly the floor seemed to be swallowing him up and the ceiling was curving into one big vortex of muddled colors. It was pretty for a moment, until he realized all the colors were grey. He frowned at that.

Not wanting to be swallowed up (he doesn’t have the time for that) he stumbled up to his feet. It felt like he was wading through a tide, shuffling through sand and debris. It was an odd sensation because he saw his legs moving fast and his gate was long yet it felt like he was moving at a snail's pace. He lifted up his hand and saw it sluggishly come up a second after he wanted it to. He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen. 

No no- he  _ knows  _ it’s not supposed to happen. He has to be quick and vigilant and fast in his feet and- 

Why? Why did he need to be those things? He was content as he was, really, to be slow and languid like soft waves. There wasn’t much point to being so uptight when there wasn’t anything to be uptight over. He gazed with half-lidded eyes as he watched his body move in slow motion. 

He was walking somewhere. He wasn’t exactly sure where but as long as he was away from the clearly carnivorous floor he was okay. He was in a room of sorts. Walls meant buildings, he was pretty sure. The ceiling was wavy now, still a boring grey, but if he wasn’t in a building he would have seen the sky. Yes, he concludes, he’s in a building. He deserved a pat on the back. He pats himself since no one is around. The touch leaves a lingering sting to it. 

And he’s a bit sad at the fact. His lips tug down into a frown and he misses people. Six people, rowdy and bustling and alive. And not singed corpses. 

He smiles at that. Of course they wouldn’t be corpses, that would make no sense. His brain was making no sense. Maybe it never did, though he doubted it.

He kept on walking. Or shuffling. He didn’t care much to check. The walls spun and twirled around him and blurred into colors he couldn’t name. They were more vibrant than the ceiling at least. It burned his eyes and made them sting. He was in a hallway now. It was long and twisting and he was pretty sure he was in a hedge maze, just without the hedges. And the other turns. A straight hedge maze then. Hard to mess that one up. 

He came to the end of the hallways abruptly and banged into the wall. It was shorter than he thought. He was sitting on the floor now, rubbing his nose and frowning at the taunting wall. There was a wall with a mouth, like the floor he had left behind, but he knew this mouth was supposed to be here. It swung open when he pushed it. It swung back and bonked him in the nose again. He was indignant at this point and punched it with weak fists. He stopped it from colliding with his nose again, just barely. He stood up with a huff and walked through the mouth.

He was in a smaller room than before now. There was something moving in it off to the corner. It was funny looking, with disjointed features and wisps where it last stood. It looked over at him after a few moments, jumping up in surprise. Maybe it was surprise. It didn’t really look surprised so maybe it wasn’t. It looked angry. 

“Oh my god. Oh Jesus, They never told me it was a child for Christ sakes-“ it was in front of him now. Weird, none of the shapes coming out of its mouth made sense. He didn’t remember seeing it move either. Then again he could have just blinked for a long time. his body seemed to like the slow and steady pace he was at so he didn’t think it was too odd an idea. 

It had touched him. That was a new sensation. It felt hot and tingly when it’s orange and purple hands grabbed his shoulders and walked him towards where it was working. It gently guided him over to a table that was squishy and he took great joy in pushing it down and seeing it pop up again. It was like bread. The thing was talking to him again with those weird shapes tumbling out of his mouth. Greys and blues and turquoise spilled out of its mouth in a waterfall. He thought it was beautiful. 

It didn’t look too happy when he didn’t answer. It waved its hand in front of his face, leaving a trail of black and pink mist. That was pretty to look at as well. The thing looked more aggravated than before. 

“Shit-  _ shit.  _ I didn’t know they were testing it on a goddamn  _ kid.  _ What the fuck,” it said as it paced in front of him. The trail was silver and gold now, catching up to it whenever it stopped moving and fizzling out. It turned back toward him and he stared back. He stopped staring after two seconds because the walls were shimmering again. “ _ Shit. _ ”

“I can’t do this. This is sick. Fuck. I can’t be seen with him, what if I’m seen by the cops? Was he kidnapped? I can’t  _ do this _ ,” it shouted in frustration, blocks spewing out of its mouth at an alarming speed. He wondered if the sharp edges cut its mouth at all. It looked back at him and he watched as the ceiling melted. 

“Okay, okay, just, just let him go. He can probably find his way back home, even like…  _ this, _ ” it said tiredly. He felt tired too and nodded along. He wanted to go to bed. The thing seemed to perk up at his response. “Great! Okay, so you’re not completely delusional. Uh, okay,” it said and guided him out of the room through a separate mouth in the wall. It swung but the thing expertly escaped before it hit him. Amazing. 

He grimaced. He could totally do that too. He just didn’t want to. 

He’s tired. 

He thought back to his previous analogy of the straight hedge maze and found that he was quite wrong. It was a labyrinth of turns and twists and he was pretty sure they were upside down for half the journey. The thing was mumbling to itself for the duration of the walk-run-drive. He never once understood what it was saying which made conversations hard. It was more difficult considering his mouth was gone. 

After turning through the ninth skip and the fiftieth jump they were at a mouth that looked bigger than the other ones. It was a door. 

He huffed. They were all doors. Man was he silly today. Was he silly every day? 

“Okay, uh, I won’t mention you so just, uhm, don’t mention me either. If the police pick you up, pretend you never saw me, okay? Uh. Bye?” The thing said and it pushed him through the door.

There weren’t any walls and the ceiling was high high up. It was disorientating. The white streaks in the sky would dip down and almost touch him, so close yet so far. The trees would bend and warp and twist around him. They would keep him rooted for a few moments before he regained his bearings and fell out of them, though he never remembered climbing them in the first place. There were a lot of things here like the thing inside the building.

They mulled about and chatted and walked past him like the sky wasn’t bleeding into their hair and burning them alive. He felt somewhat left out, noticing the skies hesitance to touch him. What was wrong with him? It was awfully rude to exclude someone so blatantly. 

He walked and he was stopped by some things that were concerned for him. He furrowed his brows at them and kept walking. They stayed behind. 

After a few moments (hours or seconds or maybe never) he got adjusted to the outside, which was where he was apparently. The buildings leaned over and cradled the sagging sky as windows flickered through searing colors like T.V static. The air around him had grown into a gradient of light blue and a funny purple. 

It suddenly struck him that he’s more than a “he”, isn’t he? He had something else. A thing that was attributed to him. Something that made his head shoot up and look towards whoever said it. Huh. What was it? The things around him all had them, he was sure of it. A small one ran over towards a bigger one and shouted their thing. A man was talking over the phone addressing the thing on the other side with their own thing. 

A name. 

He was thinking about a name. 

Why’d he call it a thing again? He couldn’t really remember. It seemed to be a running theme today, him not remembering anything. He didn’t mind too much, though he minded when he realized he didn’t remember his name. That was a bit frustrating, grating on his calm nerves in a familiar but spiky manner. He was sure he had heard it as he was walking down the street. He had seen it on window shops advertising lowered prices. He just couldn’t read them. 

The big blocky letters and numbers and fractals were splattered across the windows of almost every shop he passed. They were written with lines that dove into space and loops that swirled into vortexes. They shattered and fell off the signs and burned through them and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t read them. One symbol, the only one he wanted to read properly. He just needed to wrap his head around that one. It was big and colorfully white, advertising the purses that dipped into the earth and opened and closed with sharp teeth that plunged into itself. He was pretty sure he saw one shatter like glass, though when he looked at it, it was perfectly fine and crumbled up like a paper ball. He thought of someone who would like that purse, though when he tried to dig deeper he found nothing but screaming silence and stabbing waves. 

He lost track of what he was supposed to be doing. A name. He wanted to remember his name. But why? He blinked in surprise. Yeah, names didn’t matter much did they? Maybe he didn’t mind not having one. Maybe. 

He ignored the burning in his heart. It clenched and warped and he decided he wasn't going to think much about it anymore. 

The sky was darker now, signaling the coming of night. Or morning. Or the afternoon? When was time? It was an awfully convoluted thing, time. It was like trying to hit a bullseye blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back. While the bullseye is spinning and flickering out of existence. He had a lot of opinions on time, he knew, but he didn’t much feel like getting into it. Too much mathematical jargon he would have happily indulged in had he remembered what the curving and jagged symbols meant. He was fine as is, content not knowing what time it was. 

Was it a day since he left the building or a week? That was the important question. It had nothing to do with time and had everything to do with the passing of time. Because they were different, he thinks. Except they weren't? Was time a noun or an adjective? What did those words even mean? He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things. It was frustrating, and the familiar feeling of a tight stomach and creased brows settled upon him. He didn’t  _ feel  _ like feeling bad, he really didn’t, but it’s not exactly like he could help it. Maybe he could just turn his mind off for a few minutes (Second? Days? Years?) and just be. But he wasn’t much without his mind now was he? 

Was anyone anything without their mind? 

Obviously yes. Everyone was something. Atoms and elements and minerals and too much something for him to even think of. But that’s not what he was talking about. 

Were they anything consequential? Were they recognizable without their ideas and thoughts and personality, would they still stand out in a sea of other people if they were all mindless somethings that sat there and rotted?

He quickly stopped that though because there was a dog! He loved dogs, he was pretty sure, and this one was very small and right in front of him. It was yellow and green and pink and he couldn’t see it anymore until he could and it was right there! It was happily yipping at him and he mustered just enough energy to bend down and scoop the little thing up and hold it close to himself. It had a collar, which should probably be bad because wouldn’t this count as pet napping? But for some odd reason he felt like it wasn’t wrong. It was meant to be like this and he wouldn’t get in trouble. He felt comforted by this thought and relaxed his shoulders. It was alright. This was  _ his  _ dog. 

At least he thought so. He didn’t really feel like thinking anything else and the dog looked content enough. A win-win in his books. 

He didn’t need to look at the collar to remember the little pup's name.  _ Mr.pennycrumb,  _ a funny name for a funny dog he loved very very much. And that was weird, wasn’t it? He felt like he shouldn’t have confessed something so genuine and vulnerable like that, even if it was in his head. But why? Wasn’t it good to have feelings? He honestly couldn’t remember. Again. Like he couldn’t remember a lot of other things. He sighed and buried his face in Mr.Pennycrumb’s fur. It was soft. This was the first texture he hadn’t felt confused by since he first woke up. He smiled. 

He continued walking, because that's truthfully all he’s ever known and was now confident in his ability to put one foot in front of the other. Mr.Pennycrumb was happily snuggled up close to his chest and he felt lighter than before. Maybe he would finally be able to touch the sky? Or maybe the sky would touch him first. That sounded nice. 

He was away from all the noise and things shuffling around him at this point. He had been when he found Mr.Pennycrumb but he wasn’t aware of it until now. The streets were a bit damper now, walls runny with colorful hexagons puddling the ground. There was a scent of lemon and tables. Then it morphed into salt and crayons. He wrinkled his nose at it and Mr.Pennycrumb yipped indifferently. It was darker than before, though the colors of the world were just as vibrant and eye bleeding as before. The sky, instead of caving in, was now stretching high up, as if it was leaning to get away from the world. He didn’t pay much mind. He was slightly miffed towards the sky at the moment. 

There were suddenly a lot of flashing lights. It was a bit much, he decided, and he wasn’t a fan of it. A car hops up next to him and the lights are closer and too much and he suddenly feels  _ very  _ queasy. The flickering window melts down and he sees the face of a thing. Except he  _ knows  _ this thing so it isn’t a thing but a  _ person _ . The person looks upset. Their face was swirling in and out of blurriness and he wasn’t quite sure their body was physical. 

“Hey man, your family has been looking all over for you. Where’d you go?” They ask and instead of shapes falling out of their mouth like with the thing in the building, soft colors fall out of theirs. They splash onto the seat and are soaked into the fabric and gone in less than a second (minute, fraction, moment?) and he feels even more queasy. They look at him more worried now. “You okay there bud? We should get you back to your family, you’re not looking too-” as more colors gush out of their mouth his stomach rolls and he empties out whatever he had in him. He is hunched over on the ground and Mr.pennycrumb is thankfully out of the way and he suddenly feels very very horrible. What happened? Why did her colors make him feel so bad? Especially the colors regarding that word.  _ Family.  _ It was a word he loved loved loved but he couldn’t go to them right now. Not like  _ this.  _

Why? He wanted to be there with them. He wanted to see them and look into their eyes and realize they’re alive. They're not gone. 

The sky was suddenly too low, too crushing, and it was sending droplets of ash towards him. 

“ _ Shit-”  _ the person said and he was hauled into the car. When had they gotten out to pick him up? That was weird. Thankfully Mr.Pennycrumb was brought in with him and placed on his lap. His fur wasn’t as soft anymore, damp with something. Why? He saw splatters of grey ash and pink fuzz and he was sad. He was covered in it too. 

The person was covered in it as well, though they were more soaked in it than him and Mr.Pennycrumb combined. They climbed into the seat with the funny waving wheel and buckled in their neon green strap. They looked at him for a second and he looked away, petting through Mr.Pennycrumb’s fur in hopes of getting the colors out. They sighed and leaned over, grabbing the stretching band and wrapped it around his chest. It clicked and the car started moving. 

“You’re high,” It said in a matter of fact tone. Was that what this was? “Or drunk. I honestly don’t know but you’re going to get into a lot of trouble when you get back. You have to take more responsibility, not just going off and getting high in some back alley. Diego would hate it if you turned into Klaus. Klaus would probably hate it too,” they said and his stomach lurched again at the names. Diego and Klaus. They tasted sweet on his tongue, like they meant the world and a half to him but similarly made him want to fling himself off a bridge. They were a part of family, that word that wasn’t just a word but a meaning and a promise and his whole heart. 

He didn’t talk back because he wasn’t sure he knew how. He still couldn’t quite piece together what the person was saying but as long as it made his chest all fluttery he wouldn’t stop her. 

“I mean, come on. You look shitfaced! Who would even sell to a child? God I have to clean up these streets. I don’t even know what kind of drug you took. You look horrible, kid,” they stopped, possibly waiting for a response. He was too busy watching all the colors and patterns and shapes and textures pass by him at breakneck speed. The car was slowly being filled with the colors she talked about and the second she stopped it finally sunk down down down into the floor and through it, disappearing. He was thankful. It was getting too close to lapping at Mr.Pennycrumb’s paws. 

“Jesus…” The person breathes as the retort never comes. “I hope you get grounded after this. I hope you’re having one of the worst trips in your life right now so you can regret this and never do it again,” There's a pause and the car drains of color again. “No, no I don’t hope that. Bad trips are downright traumatic. I just… god…” they trail off. He looks back over to the person and offers a supportive smile. It’s quick and a little bit forced and once it’s there he regrets it because he doesn’t  _ do  _ that. And the person looks even more mortified. “Your smile held absolutely no bloodlust. The world must be ending,” they say and he suddenly feels like he’s drowning. Even as the colors barely come up to his feet he feels like he can't breathe. 

The end of the world. It was the end of the world? Really? Again? He couldn’t do this again, he really  _ really  _ couldn’t. He sucks in a shallow breath and it feels like the air coagulates into sticky tar, building up in his lungs. The person doesn’t notice this. 

“Okay, I’m dropping you off at the academy. As much as I want to take you to the station I realized a long time ago that anything to do with you Hargreeves leads to a mess, and my men and I are swamped as is,” they say and He’s pretty sure they’re a girl. It’s a sudden realization and it makes the tar in his lungs less noticeable so he thinks about that. They were a she, a she who was close to one of his family and he had no ill will against her. That was odd because he had begun to think he had ill will towards everything, minus the happy pup in his lap of course. 

He thought about the academy. It was a building, just like the other one. That was good, he liked buildings. They were less than outside. Less noise and less people and less air for him to be crushed by and swept up in. The academy promised family and Diego and Klaus and others that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. It also promised cold stares and the stone form and a sharp hand that would dig into his shoulder. But that was gone, wasn’t it? He was almost positive it was gone, as sure as night and day. 

But the echo of it was etching into the academy walls, and he wasn’t accustomed to time anymore. What was night and day anyways?

That just proved his point. 

He really didn’t want to go to the academy anymore. He knew it was gone, he had been there and lived there and it was gone. But it was still cold and sharp in there. He suddenly wanted to rip open the door and run away from her and the academy and maybe his own body. Sucks he was attached to it. Too bad the option was taken from him, and soon they flew up next to the wide doors of the academy. It was just as intimidating as he couldn’t remember. 

“Okay, as much fun as this one sided conversation was, you have to get out. And hopefully eat something. Here,” she shoved a small stick into his hands. It was black and moved like gelatin and when his fingers curled around it a fuzzy feeling traveled up his arm. Mr.Pennycrumb whined as he frowned at it. She sighed and got out, walking over to his door and opening it, pulling him out. She was drenched in the fuzzy pink and grey ash again, and as he stood outside of the car he saw himself get coveted in it too. He felt cold and sad. She took the stick out of his hand and pressed a button, making it shoot out and reveal an umbrella. The figure was familiar to him and he looked oddly down at his wrist. There was another umbrella there, one he’s always known. He wasn’t getting covered in Pink and grey anymore though, with the dome safely covering him. She had taken claim of his seat now, taking cover from the colors the sky rained down with the car. “Go on then. I really don’t feel like getting drenched, er…. Getting  _ more  _ drenched, so you’re going to have to walk up to the academy yourself. It’s not that far,” And then she shuffled over the empty space between the two seats and was back behind the wheel. She didn’t twist the key, just staring at him. He felt nervous, suddenly, and decided he should walk again. That's what he was best at, after all. So he held Mr.Pennycrumb close to his chest and walked. 

Right up to the academy doors, apparently. It wasn’t what he meant to do, really, considering the curling snake in his gut squeezing tighter every step he took towards the building. But he also remembered family, and at that point he couldn’t stop his feet. It was a short walk but the handle of the umbrella was buzzing and his feet sunk into the deep concrete ground like mud. It switched colors sporadically but he wasn’t focused enough to figure out which colors it flickered to. 

Before he could really realize it the door swung open and he was pulled inside by pink and fuzzy hands. He stood there trying to figure out what happened when a face appeared in front of him. This wasn’t a thing either, just like the woman in the car. He knew them, more than her, so it wasn’t a thing but a person. His heart did a little spin when their warm hand left his shoulder. 

“Dude where have you  _ been?  _ We’ve been looking all over for you!” He suddenly felt a wave of Deja vu. “Man Diego’s been in a fit, saying how you could be kidnapped or dead or whatever. We told him to chill, like seriously, you’re one tough cookie. Vanya was just as bad, maybe worse. She thought you jumped away again, poof, just like that, gone for the next seventeen years,” The person told him and he felt his stomach curl at the thought, He’d rather be dead than away from them for more than a week. He can’t lose them again. And whoa, where’d that sudden wave of conviction come from? The person in front of him was silent for a moment which was wrong wrong  _ wrong  _ because they were never quiet, they were a burst of energy that made his head dizzy. Then they talked again after what felt like an eternity (Years months decades).

“You… you can’t  _ do  _ that man. You can’t just disappear for three days.” huh. It didn’t feel like that long. When he stayed quiet the person surveyed his face more critically than before. Then their eyes widened and he whistled. 

“Man you are  _ gone.  _ What the hell did you take, little dude? Cause between you and me I need to try some. You look fifty miles away,” and then they laugh, which is wrong because it's forced and slightly panicked. They lead him deeper into the house and into a wide room with couches and a fireplace. The journey there was short but consciously riveting. The hallways were twisting under their feet and the ceiling convulsed like it was alive. The air felt burning and cold and the hand that was placed back on his shoulder was prickly like static. 

He was sitting on one of the couches and it was soft. He was sure the two separate ends were slithering around the house but the spot he sat on stayed firmly in place. The person sat next to him. 

“So little bro, where were you? What happened? You shouldn’t take drugs you know, they’ll, heh, rot yer brain,” they said the last part with a lilt in their voice and he didn’t like how self deprecating it was. He lifted one slow arm up and put it on their shoulders with a little bit more weight than he intended. It was just hard to keep his hands up, is all. “Woah, man, your emotions are just on your sleeve huh? I guess that's what will happen,” they laugh nervously. “Uh, in all seriousness though, how much did you take. You’re real spacey and I don’t want you to keel over all of a sudden. Out of all the ways you could die, an overdose is not one I’d like to attribute to you.” he tried to listen to the fuzz falling out of his mouth and piling up on the couch, he really did, but it was all nonsensical to him. 

“Five, buddy, talk to me,” 

And  _ oh,  _ he definitely caught that. 

It was his name. That was his  _ name _ . He tightened and loosened his fists as he took in this information. It all seemed so obvious now. Of course he was Five, that was his name and no others. It was his and he was Five and he felt like he could cry. The ring in his ears seemed to lessen a bit and his limbs felt more light. He mulled over the person's words and found with surprise that he could understand them now. 

“K-” He tried, feeling his tongue heavily sit in his mouth. “Klaus,” He tried again. It was jumbled and he sounded beyond stupid but his brother,  _ his brother,  _ smiled at him.

“There we go, there's our gremlin little brother. Hey, welcome back to earth,” And Five smiled at him. “Ooookay maybe not completely back to earth but it’s a start. What did you take?” Klaus tried, right to the point. That was weird, Five thought, because he usually skirted around the point like it would bite him if he got too close. 

“Take?” Five tried the new word in his mouth, still sounding heavy and jumbled but coherent enough. 

“Yeah, like what kind of drugs did you take?” Klaus was being patient. Fuzz still tumbled out of his mouth but it fell down in a trickle instead of a stream. The couch they were sitting on didn’t feel as sentient as he thought and the wandering ends were closer and more rigid. 

“Drugs?” Five asked now. He didn’t take any drugs. They were bad, he was pretty sure, and he didn’t like them. The word tumbled out of his mouth accompanied by sharp red fractals. Klaus’ brow furrowed.

Neither said anything else as there was noise and four more people entered. And there they were, his family. They were  _ his family,  _ and he felt happier at the sight of all of them. Of course, there should have been a fifth. Where was the fifth? 

Dead.

Next to Klaus. 

Was he? He couldn’t see anyone next to Klaus but his skin was itching and his brain was screaming that he was there so Five accepted it as fact. He trusted his brain more than his instincts. 

“Five!”

“Oh thank god.”

“Where the hell were you?”

There was a lot of noise and he felt sick to be the center of attention as he was now. All he ever knew was feeling this way but something deep in his gut told him that he was different, that he was acting strange and they’ll know that. 

He didn’t want to go away though. He missed them. He had been gone for… however long Klaus had said. Hours? Days? It didn’t matter. It had been too long. Too damn long. 

“Chill out guys,” Klaus tried but his brother, camo green and spiky with smoothed edges didn’t listen. 

“Calm down? This little asshole,” he pointed his hand towards Five, “Was gone for three days and then Eudora suddenly calls and says he’s at the academy? I can’t just  _ chill  _ about that Klaus, He needs to  _ chill  _ and stop thinking that he can just storm in and out of our lives,” And his words were accompanied by arrows shooting out of his mouth. Sharp and jagged but so very brittle. They sounded painful but looked dull. Hm. 

“I have to agree with Diego here. That was a dick move, Five. We were worried,” His sister says, and she's purple and soft but firm as cement. What comes out of her mouth is translucent but wavy, rippling in the air with power and kindness. 

“Okay well, Allison dear, I’m sure he would be happy to shoot back a classic Five retort but right now he’s high as a kite,” Klaus finally explains. The room is still for a moment. Five wonders if they feel the ceiling droop down into their shoulders or not. They don’t seem to react at the weight but Five couldn’t be sure. 

Then, “are you  _ kidding me? _ ” the biggest brother says. He’s blue and orange and mighty but the bubbles that come out of his mouth are delicate and fragile. They float up to the concaving ceiling and pop pop pop, their droplets pelt the floor and fizzle into smoke. “We were worried about him and he was getting  _ high?”  _

Five felt grossly unjustified but couldn’t figure out why. He was sure he had an excuse but he must have left it in the car. Maybe back at the other building. Maybe the floor ate it up. 

“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that…” Klaus says nervously. The others perk up at that and shuffle around them both, lounging in the spattered polka dot recliners or the opposite couch, curving up towards the ceiling so that it made a U shape. 

“What do you mean?” the quiet voice of their last sister asked. She was small and gentle and a warm brown tone. She was a hearth in a cabin while it snowed outside and sparks shot out of her mouth. They flickered around her for a few moments, zipping around like electricity before fizzing out. She fiddled with her hands and didn’t look Five in the eyes, just fluttering her eyes over his clothes. 

“Well, He looked genuinely confused when I asked what drugs he took. It doesn’t look like he even knows he’s high. I think he may have been drugged,” Klaus explains. 

“Sounds unlikely,” Diego scoffs but looks open to the idea. 

“Yeah I, uh, don’t think he’d take drugs on purpose. It doesn’t make sense,” Vanya speaks up again and the electric sparks zap about the room again. He follows one particular one with great interest until it lands on Mr.pennycrumb in his lap and fizzles out. They’re quiet for a few moments.

“Man he’s blasted,” Diego says and there's amusement in his tone. 

“Yeah, wonder what he’s seeing,” Allison snickers. She still sounds upset. 

“Why don’t we ask him? See what he’s been up to the past three days?” Luther suggests. He’s sat on the couch with Allison and he’s slightly tipped, sitting on the incline of the couch. Mirrors of him are scattered close, making him look skewed. 

“We can try. I don’t think he’s really coherent but I’ve responded to worse,” Klaus says coolly and the fuzz is building up on the couch into balls, rolling off and down the hall. How cute, they were like dust bunnies. Fives cheek is suddenly patted softly and he looks over to his brother.  _ His brother.  _ His hands were warm and he hoped to never feel them cold. “Hey Five, buddy,” And there was his name again. They must be addressing him. He looks at Klaus’ eyes and blinks slowly. They were fuzzing out of his sockets. Weird, but not the most grotesque thing he’s ever seen. “Hey there, you with us?” Of course he’s with them, Klaus is literally still touching him. Is he dumb? “Still got your classic glare at least. Where have you been?” Where had he been? He was on the sidewalk, and a car, and a building, and here. 

“You gotta communicate with words, Five. Don’t keep all those smart thoughts trapped in your head, your brain will explode,” Klaus says and Five panics. His brain would explode? What the fuck? He doesn’t want that, hell no. 

“I was..” He starts out slowly, words coming out in a jumble. The blood red fractals are right in front of his eyes, fanning out into the air. They shatter into smaller and smaller pieces until they’re gone. “I was outside.” he decides. 

Diego snorts. “Yeah, before then,” He tries.

“A car,” he answers again, and Diego seemed already done with this conversation. 

“Patience,” Allison glares, and Diego crosses his arms. He’s like a kid, Five muses. 

“Before that?” Luther asks.

“The sidewalk,” And Klaus cracks up.

“This is ridiculous. Shouldn’t we just ask when he’s sober?” Diego huffs. The arrows clink against the floor and grow into a tree. It's a colorful tree with rainbow leaves that slowly fall off, one by one. The bark curls up and the trunk bends and there’s no tree anymore. 

“We don’t know if it’s dangerous or not,” Vanya points out.

“Before that?” Klaus tries, ignoring the rest of their siblings bickering.

“I was… at….” He tries to remember. Luther is trying to quell Diego's outburst and failing spectacularly, only getting riled up himself. Allison is pinching the bridge of her nose and Vanya is trying to sink into the recliner. Five wonders if she realizes she's being successful. “A building.”

This answer seems to rile Diego up more and he and Luther seem to be at each other's necks now. 

“What kind of building?” Klaus asks patiently, and Five knows this. 

“A laboratory,” and suddenly the room is silent. The air feels hot and stuffy and chilly. The ceiling is shimmering in waves of sparkly sequins. It’s pretty. 

“Oh shit,” Diego says quietly. The arrows don't shoot out anymore, simply sliding out of his mouth and into his lap. They make quiet clinks and clanks. 

“Okay well  _ that  _ doesn’t bode well,” Klaus jokes and Five thinks it’s funny because a lot of things don’t bode well in his eyes. He smiles and snickers and Klaus seems to glow at the reception. 

“No, it doesn’t. If they put some weird concoction in him then we need to get mom,” Luther says firmly and stands up. Five is surprised he didn’t trip. The couch was twisting in and out of his legs. 

“Agreed,” Allison says quickly, standing with him. Eventually they all stand and Allison pulls him up with sparking hands and he follows along. Mr.Pennycrumb is tailing behind him now and he suddenly feels very cold without the dog's soft warmth on his legs and stomach. They walk through the maze and enter a room that looked strangely similar to the building he left earlier. He voices the thought and they look back at him with worry. 

“This is so…  _ weird, _ ” Vanya says, and Five has to disagree. It’s not weird. Why is it weird? 

“Tell me about it,” Klaus huffs dramatically and there’s glitter falling off his skin. How pretty. 

“He’s not even talking…” Vanya murmured as they led Five to a table that was similar to the one he sat on with that thing back at the lab. It was squishy and he took great joy in pushing it down and seeing it rise back up. He never even realized he was lifted and set on it, too busy watching the foam rise again. 

“He’s like…” Allison trailed off. 

“A child,” Diego finished for her and he gets a sudden burn in his chest, indignation bubbling up in his throat and clawing through his mouth. But it's hot and angry and he’s too tired to open his mouth, tongue sat heavily and teeth welded shut. He was content in just watching the table rise and fall. 

Another person comes in, though he knows they’re not a person. It’s his mom and her fingers are cold and metallic but it’s okay because she’s always been like that. Her fingers should be cold. Everyone else should be warm and happy and determined and  _ alive-  _ Mom puts something in his arm and his thoughts get derailed. Diego looks sick and has to look away, garnering the amused chuckles of Klaus and Vanya. Luther looks exasperated, like Diego should have outgrown this years ago, and Five isn’t happy with that. 

“You…” He starts off, quieting the room and having all eyes land on him. Diego is standing next to him, opposite of mom, but he’s focused solely on fives face instead of his arm. “It’s… it’s okay to have fears…” he trails off. Allison breaths a laugh and Diego looks mortified. Five lifts the hand mom isn’t working on and pats Diego's arm, making his brother's red face grow a deep scarlet, then blue then green then speckled grey. “Fears… they’re important. Alive,” Five tries to get across to his siblings. Klaus is cackling in the corner and Vanya has a hand over her mouth, trying to hide her smile. The corners of her mouth crackle and fizz though so Five isn’t fooled. He’s very perceptive. 

“Alive…?” Luther asks, confused. Klaus calms down a bit to pat his brother on the shoulder. Fuzz rains down his mouth and sticks to Luther's clothes as the talks. 

“Luther, he’s as high as a kite. He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Klaus soothes, but that's wrong. He  _ knows  _ what he’s talking about. Five whines and shakes his head, Klaus’ eyes going wide at the reaction. 

“ _ No,”  _ he tries, “no. Alive. Fear keeps you alive. It… it....” Five gestures his hands in frustration. Mom tsks lightly and he gives her back the arm she was working on. Diego snorts in amusement. “It's like… fear is another part of you. Of your brain,” He tries to explain. Did they really not get it? It was simple. 

They’re silent for a few moments. “Yeah…” Vanya speaks up tentatively “Yeah, your brain does make fear,” and he just  _ knows  _ they don’t get it. He’s getting frustrated now, more so than any other time. Polka dots fall off the walls and roll around in the air. 

“No, it’s like…” even he can hear the frustration in his voice. He catches Vanya wince. “It’s like… Allison,” He turns his head towards her. She looks surprised to be singled out. “What are you afraid of?”

“Uh… a loved one dying?” She sounds unsure. The ripples are soft when they come out of her mouth, waving towards and through Five and his siblings. Five scoffs. 

“No no, not a… a generalized fear. Like, a smaller fear,” she looks at Five with bewilderment. 

“Uhm… I’m scared of losing my job?” She tries again and Five want to rip out his hair. Wait, okay, he could work with this. 

“Sure. That’s  _ your  _ fear. You… you feel it for your own reasons. Like, you enjoy your job. You like acting?” he asks.

“Yes, I love acting.”

“Then that’s  _ your  _ fear because it’s  _ your  _ reason. Other actors… they... They could fear it too but, like, they love it differently. Everyone loves differently so they fear differently and, and that makes you alive,” Five explains. There, that makes sense doesn't it? It made sense to him. 

The others look between themselves. God Dammit they were clueless. Five groans and runs a hand through his hair. It feels like bee stings and slinkies. 

“It’s okay Five, you can explain it better later. When you’re more… coherent,” Vanya says, softly placing her hand on his knee. He looks at it and watches as her fingers stretch and conjoin and knot themselves together. There's a faint burning twinge where she touches him. 

“But… but I… augh…” he groans. “You need to understand. Fear is, it’s a part of your life. Not just, keeping you alive but, like, being your alive. It’s like…” He trails off, unsure of the word he wants. It rolls around on his tongue and stings. 

“I’m sure he’s having some deep life changing experience right now, just let him be,” Klaus cackles and they all glare at him. Five keeps his head low and his brows scrunched up, mulling over what he wanted to say. 

“Yeah because you’d know,” Luther hissed angrily. 

“I would!” Klaus smiles sweetly. Vanya sighs and squeezes his knee tighter. Mom makes him lay down now, taking a vile full of some type of liquid, red then yellow then pink then blue, and walks over behind him. 

“Did you really have to take so much blood?” Diego squeaks out. Whatever mom says next is drowned out by Fives own thoughts. What was the word?

“I just hope it’s nothing bad. He seems fine now but… I don’t want to lose him,” Vanya says quietly. Allison puts a fizzy hand on her shoulder. It looked like her skin was having a chemical reaction, fizzing out like soda. 

“He’s fine. At least he looks like he's enjoying himself,” Luther says, and then it goes quiet again. Their heads are all turned towards him. What was the word?

“Maybe not. He looks like he’s gonna get a brain aneurysm if he thinks any harder,” Diego jokes. It spurs a laugh out of no one. 

“His eyes are all weird. It’s odd seeing him so disoriented. He was really wobbly on the way here,” Allison says. The others stay quiet.

What was the  _ word? _

“There isn’t a drug in the system to match this, sweeties,” mom says sweetly and they all stiffen. 

“What? What do you mean?”

“It’s okay, I’ll whip something right up, but it seems Five dear has stumbled into a brand new drug. Tsk tsk, you know better than that,” mom shakes her finger at him but he’s too busy caught up in his own mind. His siblings all look close to panicking. 

“Some wakko decided to test out a new drug? On a child?” Klaus sounded baffled. 

“Thats… thats cruel…” Luther mutters quietly. Diego seemed livid, fingers twitching to fiddle with a knife. 

Suddenly Five grinned. 

“Personality!” He finally says. “Fear is… it’s a part of your personality! And you are your personality,” Five says triumphantly. Luther puts his head in his hands.

“We’ve got more pressing matters right now, Fivey,” Klaus manages to grit out. Five looks at him oddly. 

“But… why?” He sounded so genuinely confused it startled everyone else. His face was open, more open than they had ever seen before, and he had such imploring, wide eyes that it made Klaus’ heart clench. Shit, dad really fucked them up didn’t he? This is what Five should have been like. It's what they all should have been like. Shit. Fuck. 

“Uh, y’know what? Never mind, lay it on me. Whatever you’ve got to say is way more important. Fear is me and me is personality, all that deep shit” Klaus says lightly, sitting down on the foot of the table. The others don’t argue, getting comfortable as their mother works diligently in the background. Finally, they could understand better if they weren’t all jumbled. 

“So, you, you got it. Fear is a piece, a little fraction, of your personality. And you’re your personality, right?” he got nods, “So, it’s good to fear because fear is a part of you. And, and fear comes from love. Love of people or, or, or jobs or things or feelings. Fear…” He drifts off. They wait for him. “Fear  _ is  _ love. Fear is love,” He grinned, feeling ecstatic. “Fear is love!”

His siblings were lost but they smiled with him.

The only one who seemed to be on the same page was surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, Klaus. His eyes were blown wide and his mouth was slightly open. 

“Holy  _ shit  _ mi hermano. Holy shit,” Klaus said. Diego eyed him.

“You caught any of that?” 

“Fuck, yeah. Huh. Who’d of thought he’d be a philosophic type of high,” Klaus mumbled. They're quiet. 

“That sounds exactly like him.”

“Yeah there's no surprise there.”

“None at all.”

“Nope.”

Klaus snickers. “Yeah okay. But little dude just blew my mind. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

It falls into a comfortable silence. Mom is busy in the back of the room and they haven't had time to just sit and enjoy each others company in a while. Too long, in fact. The clock on the wall ticked in rhythmic patterns, sounding like a firecracker or brittle bones. The floor swam with quick-witted fish and sharp blades, cutting them up into rolling sushi only Five could see. The air tasted like lavender soap. 

In a few minutes, Five would die of an overdose. 

It wasn’t something groundbreaking, not a revelation that resonated in Five’s brain and jittered down into his heart. It was just a fact, sure as pi is infinite and lives are not, no matter how you bend the time stream.

In his last minutes Five’s consciousness drifted to the commission. It was doomed to fail, he realized idly in the back of his mind. The temp agents, the assassins, the office workers. They all seemed to think that since they could jump to whatever time they pleased that they were averse to it’s effects. They weren’t. No one could be, not even The Handle. They still passed time. The minutes would still go by, even if time stopped. If they could move, it meant they were still in their own pocket of time, ticking away until their bodies were old and brittle and rotting and dead. No one was safe from the passage of time. 

Save, that is, being thrown into time itself. Five could hop into the numbers and fractals and clutch them in his hand, bending and pulling to pop out where he wanted. He was regularly inside time, even if it’s for less than a second. So, if Five really wanted to, he could jump in and not come out. He could lay in stasis, floating between the strands of code and equations that would fracture his mind. He could lose his mind in less than ten seconds if he tried, but he would essentially become immortal. 

It’s safe to say he didn’t want to do that. Become immortal or lose his mind. 

Then his consciousness slipped back towards his family. His head was getting even fuzzier now, eyes unable to focus on anything as the fish sprang out of the floor and grew bigger, swimming around him and making everything dark. 

He remembered his family. He wondered if they remembered him, sometimes, when the nights are pitch black and the stench of the air is foul and cold. He had taken up less than half of his siblings' lives and had missed out on most of their formative years. To them, he wondered, was he just an example Reginald had made clear of? Was he a picture on the wall, telling them to never disobey and don’t try to run, a law that had simply sprung to life on day? 

He knows that it’s not as black and white as that. It was grey and muddled and he didn’t remember them as well as he’d like to say either, but were they even family anymore? 

The thought stung, but he dwelled on it. The ache in his heart was better than the buzzing numbness. They were family, of course. They had grown up together, had witnessed their high notes and their downfalls. They may not have been there for one another but they had seen it and lived it together. Five hadn’t.

“Five?”

He knew someone noticed. The heart monitor had been slowly decreasing as the time went on but at this point they couldn’t blame it on sleep. Would they miss him? Or would they cry over a child's corpse and move on the next day? Would he haunt Klaus? 

No, he thought. He wouldn’t want to do that. One brother was enough for Klaus. He probably didn’t want a stranger hovering over his back as well. 

The fish had swum up to his eyes now. Everything was black. 

“Five! Open your eyes!” 

No, he doesn’t think he will. He knew he was a rather rebellious man both in his childhood and later years. He could rebel just once more. It could be a final “fuck you” to those he cared about, just to make the tears dry faster. He had been a big asshole this entire time, and assholes aren’t missed too dearly. 

Maybe this was good. He had lived his entire life for one purpose, to stop the apocalypse and save his family. With that completed, the last couple months had been confusing for Five. He didn’t know where he stood with his family or the world itself. He had been displaced from it his entire life, so trying to integrate himself into the culture was tedious. 

Maybe this was good.

“Five! Mom! Something’s wrong!” 

Maybe it was good. 

“Open your eyes you asshole! Goddammit!” 

Maybe. 

  
  


….

Five opened his eyes in the infirmary and had a killer headache. 

His siblings were strewn about the room sleeping in precarious positions. 

My god did Klaus have any joints at all? What the fuck? 

“Good Morning sleepyhead. Or, I should say good afternoon,” Grace said kindly. He didn’t answer back. What happened? Why was he in the infirmary? He blinked slowly at Grace and she blinked quickly back with a serene smile. Heartache was in her eyes, however. Huh. Interesting. Maybe Grace wasn’t some lifeless robot after all. Before he could realize it Grace was out of his vision and he was alone with the steady breaths of his siblings. He scowled. 

With great effort he took the pillow he was laying on and chucked it at Luther, hitting him squarely in the chest. He sat up quickly with glazed over eyes quickly focusing. He looked around the room for any perceived threats before laying his eyes on Five. His shoulders untensed and he got this dopey puppy look to him, a smile creeping across his face. It was small, and secret, but there. Five didn’t know what to make of it. 

“Five…” he breathed and stood up, walking over to the side of his bed. “How are you?” He asked delicately. And wasn’t that a trip, hearing the most bullhorn sibling possibly to ever exist be delicate. It was off putting and made Five’s chest clench up with a feeling he couldn’t pinpoint. 

“I’d be better if I knew what happened,” He decided to say instead of letting an awkward silence permeate the air. His efforts were for naught, apparently, because Luther didn’t say anything, just looking at him with furrowed brows. 

“You don’t remember?” He asked quietly. 

“Remember what? What the hell happened?” Five shot back. Steadily, the rest of his siblings were waking up. Klaus, somehow, had managed to untangle himself from that godawful position and had sprung up to the other side of Five’s bed. 

“Mi hermano! Good to see you back with the land of the living! Trust me, the other side is super not worth it,” Klaus winked. Five felt his face screw up in a familiar scowl. This seemed to egg Klaus on even more. “And you’re good as new, back to your regular old grouchy self! Wonderful!” He beamed and Five wanted to throttle him already, ignoring the implications of what his brother just said. He hadn’t been up for five minutes and the urge to kill his siblings was already hitting him full force. 

Diego was there now, at the foot of his bed with Vanya. Allison had saddled up next to Luther. 

“What happened,” He groused again. Everyone sent knowing glances towards each other. 

He had told the handler a while back he was done with killing, but a sudden bloodlust surged up his veins. His eye twitched. 

“We were hoping you could have told us that, Five-o. Oh well, guess we’ll have to do actual work. Scope out the lab and all that,” Klaus sighed sadly. Ben apparently said something because Klaus made an indignant squawk. 

“Lab?” Five said, urgency flooding him. What lab? What happened? Were the others okay?

“Let’s not worry about that now,” Allison advised and the others seemed to agree with her. Five, very pointedly, did  _ not  _ agree, and was about to voice that thought before Vanya came up next to him and hugged him. 

His whole body tensed. Huh. When was the last time he was hugged? He couldn’t for the life of him remember. 

She was crying. 

Oh god she was crying on his shoulder. He didn’t know if he could cry himself, let alone console someone who was. He looked over towards his other siblings in panic. They had similar expressions to Vanya. 

Jesus, god must have sent him to his own personal hell. They were all being  _ sentimental,  _ like prepubescent children who didn’t want to leave mommys side. 

Five hated that he didn’t particularly mind. 

“We thought you were going to  _ die,  _ Five. You were so close. Mom wasn’t sure she’d make it in time,” Vanya murmured into his shoulder. Five nodded dumbly. 

“But I’m alive,” He said, trying to sooth her. It didn’t work. He didn’t understand what the big deal was. He had almost died, sure, but he was fine  _ now _ . He survived and lived another day. 

It was his specialty, it seemed. He was like a cockroach. 

“But you almost weren’t. We’re just happy you’re okay. You scared us,” Allison said with a kind smile. 

“Yeah. It, uh, it was a lot to deal with. We tried to find you but in the end you found us. Or, at least you found Patch,” Diego said. Why did he look guilty? 

“Well thanks for not getting me out of whatever it was then, real good job there guys. Want a little golden star?” Five muttered, though there was no real heat behind it. He really didn’t know how to react to all this. Klaus looked like the promise of a sticker appealed to him at least. 

“God can you not be a dick for one second? Were trying to have a moment,” Diego sighed into his hands. 

“Not on brand,” He snarked back. At least Diego smiled at that. 

“Yeah, clearly,” He huffed before looking away. He never met Five’s eyes. He probably felt like he was the reason they didn’t get to Five fast enough. It was an idiotic train of thought he knew Diego was rather privy to. He didn’t feel like commenting on it and Diego wiped the look from his face faster than it flashed across it. 

It was quiet after that. They talked a little bit, telling him how long he was gone for and how they had tried staying away to be there for when he woke up. They did a real swell job of that, Five mused. His eyes grew heavy as the chatter continued on without him. It was comforting, though he hated to admit it. It was comforting to be near his siblings. They made him feel… safe, regrettably enough. Content. 

Dare he say happy. 

Then, in his drowsy addled mind, a memory struck him. 

“I was afraid I wouldn’t get to see you again,” Five muttered, eyelids drooping progressively lower. 

“Hm?” Luther asked. 

Five didn’t indulge them in a repeat. Klaus seemed to have caught it though, much to his chagrin. Their sentimentality must have rubbed off on him. Unfortunate. 

“Aw, Five said he loved us!” 

What? “What? No I didn’t.” Five stated, not sure if his words were slurring or not. 

“Yes you did! Fear is love, you said it yourself, and you said you were afraid you’d never see us again! You were afraid because you love,” Klaus said cheerily putting a hand over his heart. It seemed to resonate with everyone in the room except Five. 

“That doesn't make any goddamn sense. Are you high again?” Five grumbled. Klaus just laughed, light and happy and free. It wasn’t as annoying as Five thought it would be. 

“Go to sleep,” Vanya said, squeezing his hand. A knowing smile was on her lips. He tried to scowl, and maybe he succeeded, but his eyes closed and his body felt weightless. The chatter continued, and Five drifted. 

Five had a lot of fears. 

Maybe that meant he had a lot to love, as well. 

…

Nah, it was probably just Klaus’ weird philosophy. 


End file.
